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To Bottle Beer

A method for bottling beer using clean bottles, sugar, and corks to produce a sparkling beverage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 23,364 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

To Bottle Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bottles

  1. Use clean, dried bottles and leave them unstopped for 12 hours.

  2. Cork the bottles tightly with good, sound new corks.

  3. Add a piece of lump sugar to each bottle.

Condition and serve

  1. Let the beer sit for 4 to 5 weeks until it is fine and sparkling.

  2. If the weather is cold, place the beer in a warm room the day before drinking.

  3. Pour off the beer carefully, leaving a small amount at the bottom to avoid sediment.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  2. Nutmeg + beertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together168 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sugar + beertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together699 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beer
Provides the liquid that is carbonated and matured in the bottle.
Lump sugar
Gives the yeast fermentable sugar to produce carbon dioxide for sparkling beer.

The step that matters

Corking the bottles tightly. Loose corks let the carbon dioxide escape instead of dissolving into the beer, so the beer stays flat rather than sparkling.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, beer):

  1. Gingerfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, beer. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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